Commissioner of NYS Homeland Security Mr. Roger L. Parrino, Sr. and NYS Senator Cathy Young were in the city of Dunkirk this morning shown here with Mayor Rosas at the Water Filtration Plant

Dunkirk City Mayor Wilfred Rosas and State Senator Catharine Young welcomed Roger L. Parrino, Sr., New York State’s Commissioner of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, to a workshop at the Clarion Hotel Tuesday morning. Mayor Rosas and City DPW Director Randy Woodbury explained how the City’s drinking water intake located one-quarter mile north of Light House Point was threatened by severe storms but received rapid emergency protection.

Pictured are Mayor Rosas and Senator Young standing both sides of Commissioner Parrino, and all three are standing above the buried 36-inch water intake that is now protected by a rock-core revetment to stabilize the lake wall behind the City’s drinking water plant on Lake Shore Drive West. It is a story of danger averted by regional teamwork.

Protecting the Great Lakes shorelines within New York State was the subject of the commissioner’s tour of northern Chautauqua County communities. At the workshop, it was noted that the Great Lakes are visible from the Moon, contain 95 percent of the fresh water in North America and that the water quality is very consistent and reliably treated for use.

Mayor Rosas told the commissioner that the city is very proud of its water treatment plant that uses state-of-the-art granulated activated carbon to filter drinking water for all city residents, for all city industries and businesses, and soon for the new North County Water District that will deliver this high-quality water to State prison facilities in Brocton and to that village and its surrounding area.

Future expansion of the water district will go easterly toward Silver Creek, and the westerly extension now being built may eventually reach Westfield and Ripley.